wrote that the new handbook was a work "which cannot fail to find immediate approval and extensive use by ornithologist, whether professional or amateur, on both sides of the water, as a convenient and authoritative reference book on birds of the western palearctic region.

"[1] A single-volume concise edition, The Popular Handbook of British Birds was produced by Philip Hollom in 1952.

The 1968 edition complied with the then-new British Ornithologists' Union checklist, and incorporated further research by J. L. F. Parslow.

The entire text was reset, the status and distribution accounts were again revised, and the species sorted into the then-current taxonomic order, ending with the buntings.

New plates were specially commissioned from David Reid-Henry (and one, of a Baikal teal, by Peter Scott), to add to those re-used from the Handbook.